Friday, June 30, 2017 at 9:00AM
Steve in Chart of the Day, HR, economics, labor, work

Super quick shot for a 'let's get out of town for the long weekend' Friday.

Today's chart comes courtesy of our pals at Bloomberg and depicts the types of jobs that have seen the most total job losses in the first part of 2017.

Here's the chart. then some quick FREE comments from me.

Three quick hits then let's fire up the grill for some hot dogs...

1. 'Wired' telecommunications jobs seeing the most losses so far in 2017 is not terribly surprising. More and more folks have abandoned a hard phone line at home, and I bet it won't be too much longer until most companies do the same for their employees.

2. Most of the rest of the impacted job sectors are in the physical retail space. Department stores, sporting goods stores, general clothing stores, all are under significant pressure from the likes of Amazon, Walmart, and others. I went to one of the local malls a week or two ago, (weird, I know), and it was half-empty and I issued an over/under of 11 months until it closes for good.

3. I want to go to one more chart for point #3 - one that shows the comparative job losses in department store employment (which we seem to not care about that much) vs. coal mining employment (which, at least in election season, we care about a lot). Take a look...

Almost 10x more jobs lost in the department stores than in the coal mines. But for whatever reason I bet most folks would have no idea of that disparity.

Why?

Some of it is political I suppose. There are pockets of the remaining coal mining jobs that are in important areas and states for electoral purposes.

But department stores are, or at least were, everywhere. And the people that work in them probably need and care about their jobs just as much as any coal miner. And if it is because of Amazon or Walmart or changing shopping tastes that thousands or potentially hundreds of thousands of department store employees end up out of work then that is likely more of a national concern than a few hundred coal miners here or there.

That is not to diminish the coal miners who are at risk. Not at all.

It's just to make a point that the department store workers matter too. And so do the warehouse workers. And the cashiers. And the bookkeepers.

And everyone whose job is under threat from automation, politics, outsourcing, or anything else.

All jobs matter. And so, too, do the people that work them.

Whether they live in a swing state or not. Whether they have a PAC or not. Whether we think they are 'good' jobs or not.

Have a great 4th of July weekend!

Article originally appeared on Steve's HR Technology (http://steveboese.squarespace.com/).